My Friend Leonard (32 page)

Leonard stops speaking, slumps into his chair as if speaking has taken all of his strength. I look at him broken and dying, wasting away, sores all over his body, wrapped in his blanket, he looks at me I speak.

A lot of things make more sense now.

Like what?

No wife, no girlfriends. Your love of clothes and white cars. Why all of my girlfriends, romantic and platonic, wanted to be your best friend. The house in Laguna Beach, which is a gay town, that I thought you loved
because of the view. Why you said Allison, who drops jaws everywhere she goes, wasn't your type. The Speedo bikini you used to wear when you went swimming.

He laughs.

The signs were there. It's fucking amazing nobody ever figured it out. And I still have that suit.

I understand it now.

He laughs again, it is a weak laugh.

Straight or gay I stick to my guns on it, it's for swimmers, Europeans, and motherfuckers with style.

I laugh.

I'm still not any of them.

Your loss. Someday you'll realize. Your loss.

Is Freddie your boyfriend?

No, though in a different situation I might want him to be. He's my care-giver, a nurse of sorts. He helps me deal with what's happening to me.

I look at him.

I'm sorry, Leonard.

For what?

I'm sorry you had to live like that for so long, sorry that you had to hide, and I'm sorry that you're dying.

I chose how to live as I've lived, and I'm choosing how to die as I'm going to die. You shouldn't be sorry. If anything I should be sorry, for keeping the secret from you and for disappearing on you.

No apology necessary.

Thank you.

Is there anything I can do?

Hang out with me.

That's all I want. Some time with my son. That's why I'm here.

Thank you, James, thank you.

 

F
reddie orders lunch from an Italian restaurant. He sets up a table on the deck. We have mozzarella and tomato, pappardelle with boar ragu, veal chops, gelato. I eat like a pig, Leonard hardly eats at all. He feeds most of his lunch to Bella, pretends to eat the rest by pushing his food around the plate. I ask him about his travels, he smiles, calls for Freddie, asks him to get his books.

Freddie brings out a stack of books, sets them on a table. There are a few art books, a couple of photo albums, four or five weathered travel guides.

Freddie starts to walk away, Leonard speaks.

Don't you want to look at them with us?

Freddie turns around, smiles.

You've shown them to me about seventy-five times, Leonard. I think I can skip this viewing.

They both laugh, Freddie goes back into the house. Leonard stares at the books for a moment, smiles. He reaches for one of the travel guides.

Move your chair over here, my son.

I move my chair so that I'm sitting next to him.

We'll start with London.

London is a good place.

A great place. Much, much better than I expected. Everyone says the food is bad and that the English have terrible teeth, but I ate like a king and saw plenty of nice choppers.

I laugh.

And the accents. They're everywhere. Wonderful British accents.

Laugh.

He opens the book, opens one of the photo albums. There is a picture of him at a stadium surrounded by fans in red and white jerseys, with banners, hats, horns and beers.

I open to Wembley, where I saw the FA Cup final, which is sort of like the English version of the Super Bowl.

For soccer.

Yes, for soccer, though they call it football.

How was it?

Great. They're crazy about their football. They have to keep the fans of the teams separated by big fences or they'll attack each other. They make our fans look like poodles.

He keeps flipping through the books, opening a passage in a guide book to a corresponding photo, he starts showing me the highlights of his trip to London. He shows me his hotel, the Covent Garden, which he calls delightful. He reads me a passage about his favorite restaurant, which is the oldest fish and chips stand in the city. He talks about the London Dungeon Museum, there were fucking rats running in circles around the iron maiden, about the British National Museum, half of civilization under one big fucking roof, about the National Portrait Gallery and the Tate, my oh my they took my breath away. He talks about the weather it sucked but I didn't mind, about the friendly disposition of the city, it's like a cleaner, nicer version of New York.

He closes London we work our way through France. He says France is like a beautiful woman who knows she's beautiful, some people will love her beauty and arrogance, some people will hate it. Leonard loves it, says he spent two weeks wandering aimlessly around Paris drinking coffee and shopping and watching people and looking at the antique stands along the Seine, he spent two days in the Louvre and two in the D'Orsay, he spent another at the Musée Rodin. He ate every meal in a different restaurant, would just stop as he walked, pick places at random, he was never disappointed.

We move through the rest of Western Europe he says I loved it all, LOVED IT ALL. We move to Eastern Europe he says man, it's wonderful over there, we should have never been enemies with those people. We skip Italy he says he has another book for that part of his trip. I ask him if there's anything he didn't like about Europe he says the Greeks were mean and the weather in Russia sucked, other than that, I fucking loved it all. He opens the Asian guides, starts taking me through his Indian trip. He says India is a different world, one every American should be required to
visit so that we understand how fortunate we are and how stupid we are. He says that despite the crushing poverty, the people are happy and hopeful and optimistic, and despite our own ludicrous wealth, we're depressed and unsatisfied and pessimistic. He talks about the cities you can't believe how many fucking people there are, the food it gave me the fucking shits, the art it's all religious, totally simple and pure, like early renaissance art, which may never have been exceeded. He says the Taj Mahal, the greatest and most magnificent monument to love the world has ever seen, is a fitting symbol for the country as a whole.

We open the book on China he tells me about Beijing it's huge and dirty and it smells and there are bikes everywhere, the wall it's so cool I can't even fucking believe it actually exists, the Forbidden City it makes every other palace in the world look like a steaming pile of dogshit. He tells me about Japan it's weird and noble and somehow simultaneously stuck in the past and in some version of the future, it's like everything is turned up to eleven.

We finish with the guide books and the photo albums, the last picture in the album is of a smiling Leonard sitting at a dinner table with a group of five hundred pound sumo wrestlers, there is enough food to feed fifty people. Leonard is still Leonard wherever he goes under whatever conditions, I laugh at the picture, he closes the albums.

He reaches for the art books, speaks.

Are you ready?

For what?

God, beauty, love. Perfection in multiple forms.

I motion to the books.

In those books?

He nods.

In these books.

That's a tall order, Leonard.

He smiles.

Order filled.

He opens the first book. The text is in Italian, there isn't much of it.

Leonard stops talking, starts slowly turning the pages, the pages are filled with color reproductions of paintings, frescoes, altars. I don't know or recognize many of the paintings, though I do recognize names: Botticelli, da
Vinci, Caravaggio, Correggio, Ghirlandaio, Raphael, Tiepolo, Tintoretto, Titian. We spend a couple of minutes on each page. Sometimes Leonard will say where the piece exists, the Uffizi, Galleria Borghese, Santi Apostoli, the Pope's rooms at the Vatican, sometimes he'll point to a small detail, a drifting lock of hair, the reflection of a glass, a shading, a shadow, the look of a face.

We close the first book. Leonard carefully sets it apart from the guide books and photo albums. He opens the second book, which is on the work of Michelangelo. He moves more slowly through the pages, some of which appear to be stained in some way. We see the Pietà, David from twenty angles. We see the sketches for the Tomb of Julius II, the plans and corresponding photographs of the Laurentian Library. There is a page for each of the panels of the Sistine Chapel, the entire ceiling is spread across two pages. There are pages devoted to the details of the Last Judgment, the entire wall is spread across two pages. As we stare at the Last Judgment, tears start falling onto the pages. Leonard doesn't bother to wipe them away.

God, beauty, love. Perfection in multiple forms.

We stare at the pages and tears fall from Leonard's cheeks.

God, beauty, love.

Perfection in multiple forms.

 

I
stay at Leonard's house. Bella and I stay in a guest room on the second floor. Freddie stays in another room on the second floor. Leonard has a bedroom set up in what used to be the dining room on the first floor. I carry Leonard to bed at night, carry him from his bed to the deck in the morning. We eat breakfast on the deck, he has sores in his mouth and all he wants is bread and water, he has trouble taking it down.

We play cards.

We watch baseball games, sports highlight shows. We rent movies Leonard has a list of movies he wants to see before he's gone
The Graduate, The Bridge on the River Kwai, E.T.—The Extra-Terrestrial, Annie Hall, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

We go out to a couple of gay bars. We go at night. We go to bars that are quieter, where they have seating Leonard can't stand up for very long. He drinks water, dances in his seat to the music, talks to other men, flirts with them, kicks me under the table when I tell him I think one of them likes him.

We take the convertible for drives through Marin late at night. We drive with the top down Leonard stares at the hills the trees the vineyards the stars the moon the sky.

We make crank calls, pick up the phone dial random numbers start speaking absolute gibberish to whoever answers. They always hang up on us, we laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh.

I take him to San Francisco's art museum. It's early we're the first ones in line. He has trouble walking, I hold his hand as we wander through the galleries, he cries when we leave.

He asks me about my work I tell him I hate it. He laughs says you have discovered the ventriloquist that hides behind Hollywood's doll. I tell him no, I hate what I do because I went to Los Angeles to make some money
so that I could try to write a book and somewhere along the way I got lost. He says quit, write a book, I tell him it's not that easy I have bills and responsibilities he laughs again and says it is that easy, quit your fucking job and write a fucking book. He asks about Allison I tell him that we still love each other but we're through, he asks if there's anyone else I say maybe, he asks who I tell him about one of my neighbors her name is Maya we're friends but nothing more. He says he likes the name Maya, it's a noble beautiful name.

We go to the beach at sunset. He sits wrapped in blankets shivering. I offer to take him home he says no, he wants to stay. We watch the waves crash, we listen to the wind scream, we watch the sun go down, we watch the sun go down.

Leonard asks me if there's anything I need to know before he dies, I think about it for a minute, turn to him, say what's the meaning of life, Leonard? He laughs, says that's an easy one, my son, it's whatever you want it to be.

 

W
e finish dinner we ordered Chinese. Leonard hardly ate, he eats less and less every day. Leonard seems distant, distracted, I ask him if he's okay.

I was thinking about my friend Andrew.

Who's he?

He was my lover.

Your lover?

Yeah, my lover.

I laugh.

The person you fell in love with?

Yeah.

You should call him your boyfriend, not your lover.

Why?

Lover is cheesy.

Leonard laughs.

You better watch out.

Why?

You're not allowed to call me cheesy.

I am if you use the word lover.

How many years have I been listening to you wax poetic about your various girlfriends, oh I love her and I can't live without her, oh she's so beautiful, oh her eyes, her eyes, her eyes.

I laugh.

A lot of years.

I'm going to call him my lover, Cheddar Boy, and you're not going to say shit about it.

I laugh again.

Okay, Leonard, call him whatever you want.

My lover.

Where is he?

Across town.

Really?

Yeah.

Why don't you see him?

I don't want to.

Why?

It hurts too much.

Why?

Because love hurts sometimes, and it hurts more if you know it's not going to work out.

How do you know it wasn't going to work out?

Look at me. It wasn't going to work out.

Who is he?

Just a guy. He's a lawyer. He's a little older than me.

A lawyer?

A lawyer. A corporate lawyer. He does work for technology companies.

And older?

I like older men. They make me feel young.

I laugh.

How'd you meet?

Freddie and I went out to dinner. He was sitting alone at a table. We asked him to join us.

Love at first sight?

Leonard smiles.

Yes.

First time?

No, but the first time I ever did anything about it.

What happened?

We ate dinner. He gave me his card. I called him the next day and asked him out. We ate dinner again that night. We talked about art, books, about each other's lives, about our childhoods, he grew up in an upper-middle-class family in San Diego and spent his childhood surfing and playing Little League. He came back here with me that night and stayed with me. We had dinner and he stayed with me every night for the next two weeks.

And then?

I sent him away. Told him not to call or ever come back here.

Why?

Leonard starts to tear up.

I'm already in too much pain. I didn't want to hurt that way anymore.

I'm sorry.

Leonard stares at the floor, starts to cry, starts to sob. I sit next to him, hug him, let him sob in my arms.